


MAG ??: The Greatest Dane

by Yarrun



Category: Scooby Doo - All Media Types, The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Psychological Horror, Surreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:41:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22977811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yarrun/pseuds/Yarrun
Summary: Statement of Ricardo Alvarez, regarding a curious incident of a dog in the nighttime
Comments: 11
Kudos: 58





	MAG ??: The Greatest Dane

**Archivist**

Statement of Ricardo Alvarez, regarding a curious incident of a dog in the nighttime. Original statement sent by post, received on May 1st, 2002. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begins.

**Archivist (Statement)**

I don't expect you to believe me. I wouldn't either. But it's been over a year since it happened, and I can't get it out of my head. I need to tell someone, but I can't have people thinking I've gone nuts. You'll have to do.

At the time, I was working as a journalist's aide at a local news station in Clovis, New Mexico. It was an internship that was supposed to lead to a proper job later on, but I couldn't stand working there. The place was just filled with bitter people who couldn't make it anywhere else, vying over who'd get control over the scant news that occurred in that rural district. Fat load of good it did them. One day, in the middle of spring, the head editor asked if someone could drive to Los Angeles. Some bigtime animator who grew up in Melrose had died, and he wanted someone to do some interviews for it. Everybody more important than me was already locked into investigating some local business, so I was given a recorder and got the chance to drive out to LA.

You've probably never taken a drive that long, on account of how small that isle of yours is. Fourteen hours of driving. Left around 5 PM and kept driving through the night. Unlike most of the staff at the station, I came from Albuquerque, and before that, Phoenix. So I was used to long drives through the middle of nowhere. But something felt off that night. There was this heavy, eerie fog, the kind you could cut with a knife. So it was just my luck that my old Honda Civic decided to give out. Something with the power supply fizzled out and it shuddered to a stop on a lonely stretch of desert outside of Yuma. Now, I don't know what you know about deserts, but they get as cold as anywhere else around midnight in spring, and without any electricity to run the heater, I was worried for my health. 

Then, out of the fog came an old van. Looked like something from the 1960s. It looked like it was blue or green once, but half the paint had flaked off, leaving it a dull grey. It rolled to a stop next to me, and the driver, a blonde, clean-shaven man with a tightly-coiffed haircut and an orange ascot, asked if I needed help. I was relieved to find a friendly face on such an occasion, and I explained my quandary to the driver. He held up a finger as he rolled up the window, talking with someone else inside the van. Eventually, he gave a signal to someone in the back, and the door was opened. I clambered in, thankful to get a taste of warmth again.

The man with the ascot climbed out to take a look at my engine while I warmed up. Once inside the van, I was given a seat in between a brunette with thick, unfashionable glasses and a lanky man with the haircut and stubble of a homeless man. In the front was another young lady, a redhead in a purple minidress. They made token efforts to introduce themselves, but for the life of me, I cannot recall any of their names. I've taken to giving them pseudonyms: the Geek, the Hippie, the Beauty, The Ascot. After introductions, they fell silent, a palpable tension filling the van, and I made no efforts to alleviate it. It had been a long night out in the cold, and I was more concerned with restoring feeling to my extremities. Eventually, I decided to ask why they were travelling this way at such a late hour.

"Heading to the next town over, like, same as usual," muttered the lanky man on my left. "We solve mysteries. Us four and the dog." He jerked his thumb, pointing behind him, and for the first time since entering the van, I realized there was a sixth inhabitant: a massive Great Dane in the midst of some radio equipment, a few coils of rope, a professional video camera, and a minifridge. He continued elaborating on some of the mysteries they had helped solve, but I couldn't take my attention off of the hound, as its attention seemed locked on me. It didn't have the body language of an angry dog, no growling, no flattened ears, and yet its eyes bore into me with a quiet anger. I was relieved when the Hippie got up and let the dog outside, where it sauntered out into the fog. 

We kept talking for a while, and the others began to loosen up as the night went on. The hippie pulled out a crate of beer and a dimebag from the back of the van, and we all sat around and got high while Ascot worked on my engine. I even pulled out my recorder in case anything they said made for a good story. And before you say anything, I only had one beer and a few pulls so I wouldn't have trouble finishing my drive. Don't go blaming the drugs on what happened next. 

First, I noticed that some of their stories weren't adding up. I was in the journalism business, so I kept an ear out for any interesting news, and I should have heard about some of the stuff they did. They mentioned being on the sets of massive films I had never heard of, inheriting money from millionaires I had never heard of. Surely a group so prolific would have made national news once or twice. And that's when they weren't outright talking about fictional events. I could have sworn the Geek said something about meeting Dr. Jekyll's descendant. You know, the fictional Dr. Jekyll? But I let it slide. A couple of teens trying to pull a fast one on a stranger's not anything new, and it was a small price to get my car fixed. Though in hindsight, they all seemed damn certain that it happened. Then, I noticed they weren't looking the same. Some of it was just, like, distortions. Ascot's ascot would...disappear at the beginning of some stories and reappear later. Beauty's dress had an extra stripe a few hours in. And the Hippie, after eating yet another massive sandwich and telling a tale of this chest full of ghosts, his shirt turned from green to red for a few moments. 

I was freaked out, but...I didn't spend all that time getting coffee and taking dictation in Clovis for nothing. I wanted to be a reporter. So I started grilling them. Picking apart their stories. I wanted the truth and I was going to pull it from them one way or another. They didn't react as I expected. When people are pressed on a lie, they tend to get nervous and defensive. But it seemed as if they were agreeing with me. Worried about their own veracity. The Beauty started crying, then the Geek, and the Ascot. Only the Hippie seemed unfazed, casually putting away another sandwich. I turned all my questions on him. I don't know why. His calmness in the face of his friends breaking down was just...insulting. But he just blew me off. Started rambling about repetition and permanence. 

I was almost about to punch him when I heard the padding of paws behind me. It was the hound, its eyes still glaring with an unnerving intensity. I backed off. I didn't want to get my throat torn out in the middle of nowhere by some guy's dog, you know? But it kept approaching me and then it...it spoke to me. God, even now it sounds like lunacy, but I heard English out of that dog's mouth. It told me that a great man had died, but his work must be continued. That I was shameful for berating his friends in a time of mourning. In a moment of bravery, or stupidity, I asked it how it could talk. And then it pounced on me.

The next thing I knew, it was morning. I was sleeping in my car, which was working perfectly in a parking lot outside of a hotel I had planned to stay at. At first, I thought the night before had been some sort of dream, something brought on by the long drive perhaps, and I tried to go about my day as usual. I checked in and drove to the funeral, did my interviews with the man's family and employees. But...they had a display of his work, and I noticed that...god, this is gonna sound stupid...he did a show about some mystery solving teens and their talking dog. I left the funeral early, raced back to my hotel room and checked my recorder to make sure I wasn't going insane. But the voices were all there, even the dog's. I...couldn't go to the station about this. Claiming that I met a cartoonist's drawings an hour out from Yuma would get me laughed out of the business. And yet I couldn't forget what happened. I made some queries and found your institute, so I'm sending you this letter and the cursed tape. I mean to put this out of my memory and continue as I always have and always will.

**Archivist**

Statement ends.

You'll forgive me for thinking that this was another practical joke. I'm no fan of animation, but even I can recognize the cast of _Scooby-Doo_ , and it's ludicrous to think that this man wouldn't have. And yet, some details ring true. William Hanna, co-founder of Hanna Barbera Productions, died on March 21st, 2001, and there was an Alvarez from the Clovis News Journal at his funeral. Attempts to follow up with him went nowhere, as he claims to not remember the event. Whether that's a sign that this is a fake or the follow-through of his insistence on forgetting the event, that is unclear. However, to my surprise, I was able to find the tape of which he spoke after some more digging through the archives. Though Alvarez claimed he was only with those...ugh...mysterious teens for a few hours, there's about 24 hours worth of material. Unfortunately, due to improper storage on the behalf of my predecessor, most of the audio has degraded, leaving only scant minutes intelligible. I took notes on the most intact portions and cross-referenced them with a list of timestamps Alvarez provided, and I will record them shortly for preservation.

Of note is that, with the exception of 'The Hound', all of the voices on the record were fairly accurate replicas of the original voice actors for the characters. Hardly ironclad proof, and there must be dozens of voice actors who could produce such imitations, but notable nonetheless. They were so close that I searched for any recordings they may have to see if they had, at some point, spoke the words on the tape. I was unable to find an exact match for any of them. However, while finding clips for comparison, I did come across an interview of William Hanna, and to my surprise, his voice was an exact match for Alvarez's bitter hound.

**Archivist (Statement)**

  
The Ascot:

"The road changes you, buddy. All these long nights, no one else on the road, the rest of the gang asleep. Time stops in starts, and races when it doesn't. Headlights blink in the distant fog and disappear when I get close. Something whispers in the radio when we cross a state line and the stations change. I hear everybody breathing in their dreams, and it sounds like there's one breath too many or one too few. So sometimes, when we have the monster all tied up, I hope that there's not some scammer under that freaky face. I want to see the mystic in the daylight, so I'll know that what's happening at night is really happening. I want to know I'm not insane."

"I wasn't supposed to be here. I really wasn't. But they needed someone who could drive stick, so here I am. The geek and the beauty eventually learned, but I know the roads, I know what to do when the van stutters or creaks. And I think that's why I stayed...'normal' longer. Just the guy behind the wheel while the others drifted further. But I can feel it pulling on me. The van, it's...it's not alive, it doesn't breathe, but it still has wants. It wants the mysteries. It wants to see the scammers humiliated. And it knows that I'm the only one who can understand it, who feels that rattling in its carburetor when I pull off the mask. Maybe it's the one driving these rituals, and we're just instruments of its will. But I have somewhere to be. That's better than you, isn't it?"

* * *

The Beauty

"One pill of duloxetine every evening, and another one in the morning if I've had bad dreams. Every few months, I see a doctor that father picked out to adjust the dosage. It's kind of funny, actually. Getting kidnapped is something I came to expect as a child. I was of blue blood, and my parents taught me how people would exploit that to steal from us. So when those masked creeps would come after me, I'd just remember what I was taught. Stay calm, stay focused, they don't want to harm you, they're just looking for a bargaining chip. But then I got tired of it and started training. Took up martial arts, learned situational awareness, even did a thing where I'd learn a new talent every week for a few months. And that's when I realized that, no matter how good I got, I would never be safe. I'd be able to stop most of the masked ones, but there'll always be one who will surprise me and catch me before I can even land a blow, and once he ties me up, I can't do anything about that. And that's when the dreams started. The night after we stopped that ghost pirate, I dreamt I was trapped at the bottom of the sea. The spectral miner? An empty cave beneath the earth. A possessed robot? Trapped inside of a walking robot suit. I'm never tied up, but I can never move, not even an inch."

"Tell me, have you ever read about scapegoats and human sacrifices? It's horrible. All those people made to suffer or die so others could find some peace. I wondered if I was one of those early on. There's a...ritual to all this. We don't catch the monster until someone gets chased or kidnapped or something. And I thought it had to be me once. But now? I think I'm a haruspex. I was a living sacrifice, and now I divine my own truth from the liver that was cut from me. I see prisons beyond prisons. It's...powerful, but it's not okay. I'm not okay. But I'll survive. I'm a blue blood, after all."

* * *

The Geek

"I'm not sure if I exist anymore. That...that sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? I'm supposed to be the logical one. I can't get caught up in paranoia. And yet...I don't think logic is going to help me out here. I keep...I keep remembering things I've done that I couldn't have done. I made mainframes that could fit in a suitcase. Androids with better artificial intelligence than what Silicon Valley can produce now. All as a mere child. I couldn't have, and yet I remember it as clearly as my mother's face."

"I want to believe I'm just ill, but it's not like my current vocation is more logical. Tell me, how do we keep finding criminals in masks? I've done the math. On average, we find 50-80 masked criminals in a year, usually by accident. That's more unlikely than getting struck by lightning during a shark attack in a windstorm. Twice. And that's not accounting for the other commonalities. The similar motives, the rhythms of investigation, the 'meddling kids'. I'm certain that we've repeated the same case on multiple occasions, step for step, word for word except for the culprit. At first, I thought it was some sort of criminal conspiracy, but no matter how deeply I investigated, there was no link connecting all of them. There's no man behind the masked man, no one pumping false memories into my brain. So what? Are we just so improbable that I can't believe that we exist?"

"And the worst thing is that nobody else seems to care. People should be suspicious of us! At this point, it's more likely that we're staging these mysteries to solve them rather than coming across them independently. But the cops don't question it, or the people we help, or even the people we put in prison. Please, tell me at least you care! Tell me that...that I'm not alone."

* * *

The Hippie

"Here, have a sandwich. It's fine, I've got a dozen of them in the minifridge. I just hate to see someone go hungry while I talk. I'm, like, pretty lucky. No matter how much I eat, I, like, never gain any weight."

"About once a week, me and my best friends in the whole wide world are chased by criminals. Some of them just want us gone, but some, like, actually want us dead. It's been like this on and off for several years, and I feel like nothing's truly changed since the first day we started. Like I'll look through the window in the back and see mom and pop waving at me as they disappear into the distance. I was terrified at first, spending nights awake thinking about, like, what could have gone wrong, but then I realized that there was something in common with all those spooky shenanigans. We came out alive."

"The others, they all worry about what these adventures are doing to us, but I, like, see something different. We're immortal now. Or, like, better than immortal, because we don't change. I haven't shaved or bought new clothes since we left mom and pop. My hair hasn't grown a single inch. My feet never get callused, no matter how much time I spend running. So yeah, I'm, like, always scared. Monsters frightened me at the beginning, and I think they always will no matter how long we do this. But the sad men and women in those costumes are going to die one day. But not me."

* * *

The Hound

"I was born from an egg on the holy mountain. I crawled out of the darkest cave in the Appalachians. I was born from a human mother who gave birth under Sirius, the Dog Star. When she saw my face, she cast me out into the woods, and I took on a form like the wild dogs that raised me. Does that sound right?"

"A meteor landed on Earth from the Tenth Planet, and it cracked open and I crawled out. Higher beings from another dimension possessed my lupine ancestors, and I am the fruit of their folly. A black beast beneath the earth stretched out a single tentacle and guided my brain to speech. Is that enough for you? Are you satisfied?"

"I was born a question with an answer that I cannot give, no matter how often your kind ask me for one. I spend my life pursuing the highest and lowest of goals: the satisfaction of my base desires and the well-being of those who love me. What does it matter that I can talk? What does that satisfy for me, or for you? It does me no good to look behind me, and I suggest you do the same."

Recording ends.


End file.
